Caged Lion

For some people they’re 401k might keep them up at night or the prospect of retirement might scare them into cold sweat and panic attacks but for me it’s the opposite. The here and now scares me to the extent where I feel like the neck tie I wear to work every day is choking the creativity out of me. Maybe it’s my innate nature trying to tell me something. Maybe it’s the lack of intuition to turn my ideas into creative unique realities that I can immerse myself into for hours on end before coming back to reality. Or maybe it’s a lack of infrastructure in the island where I presently reside. Whatever the issue may be I sometimes feel like my purpose is not being fulfilled. Wanting to learn more and ensuring a better quality of life in the long run lead me to university to pursue a tertiary education. Hands down it was a great escape from reality for me and I would do it again on any given day. But now I find myself feening for a change of environment, scenery, and overall experience. I now know how those lions in the zoo in Port of Spain feel behind that 16inch think glass. The saying goes “it’s a jungle out there” but have we ever stopped to think that some people are born to be wild (no pun intended). For some the open plains are their fountain of youth. It is what keeps them up at night with the wheels of creativity going a hundred miles down the high way of dreams heading to the promise land where dreams become realities and passions become pay checks. To add perspective to my wandering thoughts I’ll relay a story from “What the dog saw” by Malcolm Gladwell. Gladwell wrote about an executive who had a position of notable mention in a company of high esteem who quit in order to pursue a career as a writer. Equipped with only the experienced garnered from a few creative writing classes in college, he sets off on a whirl win adventure to pursue an ideal that was far removed from his area of expertise. If one were to only see the beginning of this story and the successful end it would seem like a walk in the park. However Gladwell goes deeper into the processes that lead to a best seller and reveals writing routine that was rigid and involved numerous trips to Haiti to explore plot points for a work of art that seemed to change ever so often. What may have seemed like an instant hit was a labor of love, time and experience but it was a decision that some may have thought two, three or four times about. Mention was also made of two famous artists, one who peaked early in life and the other was a late bloomer. Both have their names etched in the walls of history despite the fact that their journeys were as different as could be. Needless to say for some its an instant hit, while for others it’s a painful process but doing what we loving and loving what we do is the main goal. At the end of the day I have to ask myself, “Self, are you a caged lion or a wandering elephant?”